10 thoughts on “Into The Rift”

Been playing for about 3 days now, very hooked. The game has been reasonably stable for me up till yesterday (when nobody could login and the server was down all day). It seems MANY people have trouble with “stuck” characters where they can’t login to certain characters, possibly due to overcrowding and no que system in place (although they’ve stated that this will be in, and actually a “feature” of elite accounts to bypass it).

It’s got scores of other bugs, ranging from minor (engie drones can’t be summoned again until you relog if you exit a zone with the drone still out) to major (random crashing and the locked characters).

Overall, the gameplay is polished and awesome, with a good team on the bug fixes they could release “Diablo 3” (also known as Hellgate) and make a boatload of money.

“And though captivating at first, Hellgate’s repetitive environments don’t hold a candle to the Diablo series’ varied overworlds. Set in a dead city, the game struggles to mix up subways and street corners with a few blazing, gothic portals to hell, or a handful of marble labyrinths. None of these diversions are particularly interesting, or even much divergent from the grayscale aesthetic of the decrepit urban pathways.”

Maybe the best thing I can say about Hellgate is that I wanted to keep playing. Even after putting up with a horrendous spate of annoying bugs and a torturous amount of downtime, I was still hooked. It grabbed me from the first moment, and though it’s been doing its best to shake me free, I’m still looking forward to hitting that next level. All this drug of a game needs is a round of QA and an expanded soundtrack.

All I know is, when I sit down at my computer I go right for HGL bugs and all.

Gah! My poor comment! I don’t mind blabbing a few details here and there, the cat is out of the bag already so to speak. The comments I posted aren’t anything you can’t find on a dozen forums with more details :)

Anyway, not much to worry about Julian, there are quite a few more environments since that reviewer played apparently. There are also, 3 “books” or expansions planned already (that’s all public knowledge now, screenshots in the wiki abound). I’m versed just enough in legalese to know that I’m not worried about spilling the beans about a few things here and there, but out of respect of the blog I won’t post anymore “spoilers” if you don’t want me to, just say the word ;)

Precisely. It’s very encouraging that in a game that’s still clearly in beta, I have a hard time putting it down. It’s a blast, that’s for sure. Very addictive and perfect when you just want to hop on and whack foozles… with physics and lots of high tech weapons.